System and method for providing a response to a search query

ABSTRACT

A system receives a request to search an electronic catalog of a vendor which specifies a query term. The query term is used to search an electronic catalog of a third party. The results obtained by searching the electronic catalog of the third party are parsed to uncover a keyword recognized by a search engine associated with the electronic catalog of the vendor. The uncovered keyword is then used in the search engine associated with the electronic catalog of the vendor to locate one or more items in the electronic catalog of the vendor. Items located in this manner are the search results responsive to the query term.

RELATED APPLICATION

This application is a continuation of and claims the benefit of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/126,761, filed May 11, 2005, which application is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

The following relates generally to e-commerce and, more particularly, relates to a system and method for providing a response to a search query.

Systems and methods for searching electronic product catalogs for the purpose of facilitating e-commerce are well known in the art. In this regard, many online merchants commonly provide search engines for assisting customers in locating items from an online catalog. For example, as described in the background section of U.S. Pat. No. 6,144,958, to perform a search using a search engine, a user submits a query containing one or more search terms. The query may also explicitly or implicitly identify a record field to be searched, such as a title, author, subject classification, model number, etc. of the item. A query server program of the search engine then processes the query to identify any items that match the query. The set of items identified by the query server program is referred to as the “query result,” and is commonly presented to the user as a list of the located items.

When the user of a search engine, however, enters a search term in an attempt to locate an item that is not within an electronic catalog, many search engines will simply return a null (empty) search result. The user frustration that arises from the presenting of null search results is a significant problem for online vendors. For example, null search results may lead to the loss of current and/or future sales by an online vendor.

In circumstances where an online vendor does not offer for sale an item a user is looking for, it is also known in the art to assist users in locating other vendors for the item of interest. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,785,671 describes a system that assists users in locating Web sites or Web pages from which a user-specified item may be purchased. To this end, the system utilizes a Web crawler program to retrieve Web pages which are evaluated, according to a set of content-based rules, to generate a score that indicates a likelihood that the Web page includes an offering for the user-specified item. The user may then be presented with a search result from which the user can navigate to those Web page(s) of vendor(s) that have been determined to likely include an offering for the user-specified item. It will be appreciated that redirecting sales to other vendors is also generally undesirable as it again may lead to the loss of current and/or future sales by an online vendor, e.g., the user may, in the future, proceed directly to the other vendor when desiring to purchase an item.

SUMMARY

To address these and other problems associated with known methods for facilitating the online sales of items, disclosed hereinafter is a system and method that responds to a search for an item in which the search request specifies a query term that would normally result in a null search. More particularly, the described system receives a request to search an electronic catalog of a vendor which specifies a query term. The query term is used to search an electronic catalog of a third party. The results obtained by searching the electronic catalog of the third party are parsed to uncover a keyword recognized by a search engine associated with the electronic catalog of the vendor. The uncovered keyword is then used in the search engine associated with the electronic catalog of the vendor to locate one or more items in the electronic catalog of the vendor. Items located in this manner are the search results responsive to the query term. Thus, the described system and method provides a mechanism for translating a first search request having what would normally be an unrecognized query term, i.e., one which would normally return a null search result, into a search request having a recognizable query term and, furthermore, may utilize the vast resources of the Internet/world wide web as the effective translating engine.

A better understanding of the objects, advantages, features, properties and relationships of the system and method described hereinafter will be obtained from the following detailed description and accompanying drawings which set forth illustrative embodiments which are indicative of the various ways in which the principles of the invention may be employed.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

For a better understanding of the described system and method for providing a response to a search query, reference may be had to preferred embodiments shown in the following drawings in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary computer system in which the principles of the described invention may be employed;

FIG. 2 illustrates a screen shot of an exemplary Web page having a query entry field;

FIG. 3 illustrates a flow chart diagram of an exemplary method for providing product alternative(s) in response to a search query;

FIG. 4 illustrates an exemplary null search results page;

FIG. 5 illustrates screen shots of an exemplary spidering program;

FIG. 6 illustrates an exemplary, parsed search result page retrieved using a spidering program;

FIG. 7 illustrates exemplary data maintained within an electronic database of a vendor;

FIGS. 8 and 9 illustrate exemplary keyword indices;

FIGS. 10 and 15 illustrate a screen shot of a search result page retrieved from a third party Web site using a spidering program;

FIG. 11 illustrates a flow chart of an exemplary method for identifying product alternatives using a batch process;

FIG. 12 illustrates a flow chart of an exemplary method for providing product alternatives considering a product parametric;

FIGS. 13, 14, and 16 illustrate exemplary alternative search results pages including products from the catalog of the vendor.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Turning to the drawings, wherein like reference numerals refer to like elements, an exemplary system and method for providing a response to a search query is described. In particular, as illustrated in FIG. 1, the system and method will be described in the context of a plurality of processing devices linked via a network, such as the World Wide Web or the Internet. In this regard, a processing device 20, illustrated in the exemplary form of a computer system, is provided with executable instructions to, for example, provide a means for a user to access a vendor server 68 and thereby perform a search for items. Generally, the computer executable instructions reside in program modules which may include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, etc. that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Accordingly, those skilled in the art will appreciate that the processing device 20 may be embodied in any device having the ability to execute instructions such as, by way of example, a personal computer, mainframe computer, personal-digital assistant (“PDA”), cellular telephone, or the like. Furthermore, while described and illustrated in the context of a single processing device 20, those skilled in the art will also appreciate that the various tasks described hereinafter may be practiced in a distributed environment having multiple processing devices linked via a local or wide-area network whereby the executable instructions may be associated with and/or executed by one or more of multiple processing devices.

For performing the various tasks in accordance with the executable instructions, the processing device 20 preferably includes a processing unit 22 and a system memory 24 which may be linked via a bus 26. Without limitation, the bus 26 may be a memory bus, a peripheral bus, and/or a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. By way of further example, the bus 26 may include an architecture having a North Bridge and a South Bridge where the North Bridge acts as the connection point for the processing unit 22, memory 24, and the South Bridge. The North Bridge functions to route traffic from these interfaces, and arbitrates and controls access to the memory subsystem from the processing unit 22 and I/O devices. The South Bridge, in its simplest form, integrates various I/O controllers, provides interfaces to peripheral devices and buses, and transfers data to/from the North bridge through either a PCI bus connection in older designs, or a proprietary interconnect in newer chipsets.

As needed for any particular purpose, the system memory 24 may include read only memory (ROM) 28 and/or random access memory (RAM) 30. Additional memory devices may also be made accessible to the processing device 20 by means of, for example, a hard disk drive interface 32, a magnetic disk drive interface 34, and/or an optical disk drive interface 36. As will be understood, these devices, which would be linked to the system bus 26, respectively allow for reading from and writing to a hard disk 38, reading from or writing to a removable magnetic disk 40, and for reading from or writing to a removable optical disk 42, such as a CD/DVD ROM or other optical media. The drive interfaces and their associated computer-readable media allow for the nonvolatile storage of computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules and other data for the processing device 20. Those skilled in the art will further appreciate that other types of computer readable media that can store data may be used for this same purpose. Examples of such media devices include, but are not limited to, magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital videodisks, Bernoulli cartridges, random access memories, nano-drives, memory sticks, and other read/write and/or read-only memories.

A number of program modules may be stored in one or more of the memory/media devices. For example, a basic input/output system (BIOS) 44, containing the basic routines that help to transfer information between elements within the processing device 20, such as during start-up, may be stored in ROM 28. Similarly, the RAM 30, hard drive 38, and/or peripheral memory devices may be used to store computer executable instructions comprising an operating system 46, one or more applications programs 48 (such as a Web browser), other program modules 50, and/or program data 52. Still further, computer-executable instructions may be downloaded to one or more of the computing devices as needed, for example, via a network connection.

An end-user may enter commands and information into the processing device 20 through input devices such as a keyboard 54 and/or a pointing device 56. While not illustrated, other input devices may include a microphone, a joystick, a game pad, a scanner, etc. These and other input devices would typically be connected to the processing unit 22 by means of an interface 58 which, in turn, would be coupled to the bus 26. Input devices may be connected to the processor 22 using interfaces such as, for example, a parallel port, game port, firewire, or a universal serial bus (USB). To view information from the processing device 20, a monitor 60 or other type of display device may also be connected to the bus 26 via an interface, such as a video adapter 62. In addition to the monitor 60, the processing device 20 may also include other peripheral output devices, not shown, such as speakers and printers.

The processing device 20 may also utilize logical connections to one or more remote processing devices, such as a Web servers 64, 68 having associated data repositories. In this regard, while the remote processing devices 64, 68 have been illustrated in the exemplary form of a computer, it will be appreciated that the remote processing devices 64, 68 may be any type of device having processing capabilities. Again, it will be appreciated that the remote processing devices 64, 68 need not be implemented as a single device but may be implemented in a manner such that the tasks performed by the remote processing devices 64, 68 are distributed to a plurality of processing devices linked through a communication network

For performing tasks as needed, the remote processing devices 64, 68 may include many or all of the elements described above relative to the processing device 20. By way of further example, the remote processing device 68 may include the executable instructions for handling search requests and providing search results with the processing device 20 being a thin client or a simple input/output device. Communications between the processing device 20 and the remote processing device 64 may be exchanged via a further processing device, such a network router 72, that is responsible for network routing. Communications with the network router 72 may be performed via a network interface component 73. Thus, within such a networked environment, e.g., the Internet, World Wide Web, LAN, or other like type of wired or wireless network, it will be appreciated that program modules depicted relative to the processing device 20, or portions thereof, may be stored in the memory storage device(s) of the remote processing device 64.

For providing a product alternative in response to a search query, a user first uses an input device to provide a search query term to the system. By way of illustration, a user may access the Web site of a vendor by establishing communications with the vendor server 68 via the network. Upon establishing contact with the vendor server 68, the user may then be presented with (or navigate to) a search entry Web page 200, an example of which is illustrated in FIG. 2. More particularly, the search entry Web page 200 provides a graphical user interface element 202 by which a user can use an input device to enter a freeform query term, e.g., a product name, product descriptor, product manufacturer, product stock keeping unit (“SKU”) number, etc.

Once a query term is entered 300, a search engine associated with the vendor Web site 68 may, as illustrated in FIG. 3, perform a query 302 to determine if the electronic product catalog of the vendor, e.g., product related data stored in database 68A, includes any entries that might satisfy the query requested by the user. In the event that the search performed by the search engine does uncover one or more entries in the electronic product catalog of the vendor which satisfy the freeform query requested by the user, the results of the search my be presented to the user in keeping with conventional practice 304. In the event, however, that the search performed by the search engine does not uncover one or more entries in the electronic product catalog of the vendor which satisfy the freeform query requested by the user, rather than immediately present to the user a “null search” page, an example of which is illustrated in FIG. 4, further processing may be performed, in the various manners described below, to generally provide the searching user with one or more alternatives to those items the user may have been searching for.

When the search performed by the search engine does not uncover one or more entries in the electronic product catalog of the vendor which satisfy the freeform query requested by the user, a further search may be initiated over the network for the purpose of trying to identify what item or items the user may have been actually searching for. To this end, the further search may include the searching 306 of a third party database 64A associated with a third party server 64 using a network searching tool, such as a conventional Internet spidering program, an example of which is illustrated in FIG. 5. It will be appreciated that the searching tool may also be a program which utilizes APIs (application program interfaces) associated with the third party database, etc.

To search the third party database 64A in keeping with the illustrated example, the freeform query term(s) entered by the user may be utilized as the argument(s) supplied to the network searching program. By way of example, in the case where the user entered the freeform query term “40245,” which would normally result in a “null” search as illustrated in FIG. 4, the search tool may be used to search for item(s) within the third party database 64A which may have some relationship within the third party database 64A to the user-provided term “40245.” In this illustrated example, the third party Web site 64 might be “froogle.com” and the search tool may perform the search of the database 64A associated with the third party Web site 64 by posting the following to the network: “http://www.google.com/froogle?q=40245” As will be appreciated, the third party Web site 64 will respond to the search request provided by the search tool by returning relevant search results, if any. It will be further appreciated that, in the event that the third party Web site 64 fails to return any search results, or any search results determined to be relevant, further searches of further third party Web sites may be performed in a similar manner.

Considering now the search results returned from the third party Web site 64, in the event that the search results are in the form of a mark-up language formatted page, it is preferred, although not required, that the mark-up language formatted page be parsed 308 to thereby strip mark-up language page tags from the returned search results. Thereafter, the remaining text, an example of which is illustrated in FIG. 6, may be searched 310 to determine if the remaining text includes any information that may be relevant to the initial query entered by the user. This relevancy determination would typically consider the products/items that the vendor normally sells.

To determine if the search of the third party Web site 64 uncovered any relevant information, the text of the search results returned from the third party Web site 64 may be searched for occurrences of keywords. These keywords may be keywords that also appear within the electronic product catalog of the vendor (for example FIG. 7 illustrates the long description file of two product “SKUs”—1A004 and 1A005), are index words used to find products in the product catalog of the vendor (for example FIGS. 8 and 9 illustrate a descriptor index and a brand name index, respectively), or the like. Furthermore, the text of the search results returned from the third party Web site 64 may be searched (manually or by means of a computer program) to look for indicators that are typically found as transitions between items when more than one item is included within the returned search results. The transition indicators are useful to allow text in the search results to be associated with individual items. For example, as seen in FIG. 6, the text word “price value=” may serve to indicate an end to the data related to one item and the transition to data related to another item (for aide of reference, FIG. 10 illustrates a mark-up language page displayed in a browser which corresponds to the parsed text file of FIG. 6 where it can be seen that the displayed price follows item description data). Transition indicators may also be recognized in one or more mark-up language tags found within a returned mark-up language document. Keyword(s) found in an item descriptor in the returned search results may then be utilized to provide the user with the ability to find the product(s) they may have been interested in when the search process was commenced.

By way of illustration, when the user entered the search term “40245” the search results of FIG. 6 were returned from the third party Web site. Within these returned search results, at least the data associated with the first item, the “Akro-Mils Divider For Bin” (see FIG. 10) includes vendor keywords, i.e., keywords relevant to the product catalog of the vendor, namely, “Akro-Mils” and “bin.” Using these keywords, the product catalog of the vendor may then be re-queried to provide product alternatives (or the actual product the user was looking for but using an original keyword that was unrecognized by the vendor system). By way of example, FIG. 13 illustrates a page which presents to the user “Akro-Mils” products in the catalog of the vendor which products were uncovered through a search of the vendor catalog using the “Akro-Mils” keyword found in the Internet search results as a new search query term provided to the search engine. Similarly, FIG. 14 illustrates a page which presents to the user “bin” products in the catalog of the vendor which were products were uncovered through a search of the vendor catalog using the “bin” keyword found in the Internet search results as a new query term provided to the search engine.

In the case where multiple recognized keywords are found in the Internet search results, the user may be prompted to further direct the user towards the search results that the user might consider to be most meaningful. For example, the user may be prompted with the following in keeping with the above-example, “Did you mean to search for Akro-Mils?” and/or “Did you mean to search for bins?” This further guidance may be utilized in-lieu of presenting the user with the search results obtained using all recognized keywords.

As a further example, in response to a user originally entering a search query “48-11-2230,” which keyword in this example is not recognized by the vendor search system and which would normally result in a “null search” result, the subject system would search the third party Web site using the query term “48-11-2230,” retrieve the search results (an example of which is illustrated in FIG. 15), examine the search results for recognized keywords and item transition points (in this example both “Milwaukee” and the parametric or units of measure “UOM” of “18 volt” would be recognized keywords), use the recognized keywords to re-query the vendor catalog, and return search results such as illustrated in FIG. 16.

In some instances, it may be desired to allow a representative of the vendor to examine the results obtained by using this process to provide, for example, a relevancy weight to the obtained results. Using this relevancy weight, items from the vendor catalog may be presented to the user in an ordered fashion, e.g., with those deemed most likely to be what the user was searching for presented at a top of an ordered list, highlighted, etc. The ranking of the ultimate search results may also be performed by providing weights to the keywords uncovered in the Internet search results. For example, search results obtained using an SKU as a re-query term may be given a first ranking level, search results obtained using a brand name keyword as a re-query term may be given a second ranking level, and search results obtained using a product parametric descriptor as a re-query term may be given a third ranking level. Still further, when UOMs are specified in the original query entered by the user (which UOM may be utilized as part of the Internet searching process or stripped prior to the Internet searching process) or when UOMs are found in the results returned from an Internet search, the UOM may be also be utilized to rank the relevancy of search results as illustrated in FIG. 12. For example, if the user specified “18 Volts” in the original query with “48-11-2230,” the one product sold by the vendor meeting all of the keywords found in the Internet search result item which also meets the specified “18 Volts” is provided to the user, as illustrated in FIG. 16. Still further, if the user specified, for example, “15 Volts” in the original query with “48-11-2230” or “15 Volts” was returned as an Internet search result item, the vendor items having a UOM close to 15 Volts may be presented to the user as search results as alternatives, e.g., the 18 Volt product illustrated in FIG. 16.

In yet another embodiment, the vendor Web site 68 may maintain a list of all keywords entered over a given period of time that resulted in a null search and then perform the search of the Internet in a batch process to identify product alternatives in keeping with the above-described process. In this manner, as illustrated in FIG. 11, a look-up table may then be created and maintained such that, when that keyword is entered into the search engine in the future, rather than provide a null search result, a positive search result is provided. For example, if “40245” were a search term that originally resulted in a null search, the query term “40245” could be used as a term in the batch Internet searching process where the recognized keywords “Akro-Mils” and “bin” would be uncovered for the query term “40245” and mapped to the query term “40245.” Then, when the query term “40245” is entered in the future by a user, the system may prompt the user with “Did you mean to search for Akro-Mils?” and/or “Did you mean to search for bins?” since the recognized query terms “Akro-Mils” and “bins” (or results of already performing this query) have been mapped to the previously unrecognized query term “40245.” Thus, the query of the third party site may be performed to reduce future “null” searches rather than in near real-time as described previously.

It will be additionally appreciated that the input into the system may be, for example, a customer master file, i.e., a file which details products a customer is interested in purchasing which may include product SKUs, parametric values, and other product descriptors. In one case, the customer master file may be treated as if it were the returned Internet search results, namely, it may be parsed to look for keywords and item transitions with the keywords then being used to search the vendor catalog for products. In another case, the customer master file may be parsed and the data terms within the customer master file may be utilized as the initial search terms, i.e., where terms are unrecognized, an attempt may be made to translate those terms using the network (to access a remote data repository) to find recognizable keyword equivalents to those terms for use in the searching process.

While specific embodiments of the invention have been described in detail, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that various modifications and alternatives to those details could be developed in light of the overall teachings of the disclosure. For example, it will be appreciated that the initial search request may originate via a phone call, email, etc. issued to an IVR (interactive voice response) system, a sales representative, automated email parser, etc. The initial search request could also originate using any input device such as a scanner. Still further, possible results could be communicated back to the user orally, by email, etc. Accordingly, the particular arrangement disclosed is meant to be illustrative only and not limiting as to the scope of the invention which is to be given the full breadth of the appended claims and any equivalents thereof.

All patents, patent applications, and other references cited within this document are hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety. 

1. A method for providing a search result, comprising: receiving at a server device of a vendor a request to search a hardware database device of the vendor in which is stored a representation of a product catalog, the request specifying a query term; causing the server device of the vendor to use the received query term to initiate a search of a hardware database device associated with a server device of a third party; using a software algorithm at the server device of the vendor to parse the results obtained by searching the database associated with the server device of the third party to uncover a keyword recognized by a search engine associated with the hardware database device of the vendor; causing the search engine associated with the hardware database device of the vendor to use the uncovered keyword to search for one or more items in the hardware database device of the vendor; and causing the items in the hardware database device of the vendor that were located as a result of using the uncovered keyword as input to the search engine associated with the hardware database device of the vendor to be displayed on a hardware display device as the search result responsive to the query term.
 2. The method as recited in claim 1, comprising using a spidering program to search the hardware database device associated with the server device of the third party.
 3. The method as recited in claim 1, comprising using an algorithm to rank the one or more items in the hardware database device of the vendor located as a result of using the uncovered keyword as input to the search engine associated with the hardware database device of the vendor according to a deemed relevancy.
 4. The method as recited in claim 3, wherein the relevancy is determined based upon a type of the keyword recognized by the search engine associated with the hardware database device of the vendor.
 5. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the query term is entered via a hardware input device into a Web page.
 6. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the query term is provided via an email.
 7. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the query term is provided via an interactive voice response (IVR) telephone system.
 8. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the results obtained by searching the hardware database device associated with the server of the third party are parsed to uncover delimiters to distinguish between multiple items in results obtained by searching the hardware database device associated with the server of the third party.
 9. A method for providing a search result, comprising: receiving at a search engine device a request to search a first hardware database device which specifies a first query term which is unrecognized by the search engine device; accessing a second hardware database device that is associated with a server of a third party via a network and causing the first query term to used at the server of the third party find a second query term that is extracted from the second hardware database device as a result of using the first query term which is unrecognized by the search engine device; causing the second query term to be used as input to the search engine device to perform a search of the first hardware database device; and causing results obtained from the search of the first hardware database device using the second query term as input to the search engine device to be displayed on a hardware display device as the search result responsive to the first query term.
 10. The method as recited in claim 9, comprising storing in the first hardware database device a mapping between the first query term and second query term extracted from the second hardware database device through use of the first query term to thereby eliminate the need for performing the step associated with accessing the second hardware database device via the network should the first query term be again received in a request to search the first hardware database device.
 11. The method as recited in claim 9, wherein the network comprises the Internet.
 12. The method as recited in claim 9, wherein the first hardware database device comprises data indicative of a vendor product catalog.
 13. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein multiple keywords are uncovered during the parsing and the method comprises allowing a user to select via use of a hardware input device one or more of the keywords for use as input to the search engine associated with the hardware database device of the vendor.
 14. The method as recited in claim 1, wherein the query term is extracted from a customer master file comprised of data indicative of plural item entries.
 15. A computer readable media having stored computer executable instructions for providing a search result, the instructions performing steps comprising: parsing an input customer master file comprised of data indicative of plural item entries to discern each item entry and to uncover one or more keywords within the discerned item entries which keywords are recognized by a search engine associated with a hardware database of a vendor; using the uncovered keywords in the search engine associated with the hardware database device of the vendor to uncover one or more items in the hardware database device of the vendor; and providing the one or more items in the hardware database device of the vendor as the search result. 